Work · Structuralism & Poststructuralism
Cogito and the History of Madness
Derrida's critique of Foucault – whose lectures he had attended at the École normale – and of his reading of Descartes.
Introduction
Derrida gave the lecture on 4 March 1963 at the Collège philosophique in Paris, with Foucault in the audience; it was published the same year and reprinted in Writing and Difference (1967). He questions Foucault’s reading of a passage in Descartes’ First Meditation, in which Descartes seems to set madness aside while taking dreams seriously. For Derrida, the hyperbolic doubt of the evil demon includes madness; a history that tries to let madness speak for itself must still use the language of reason. Foucault replied sharply in 1972 in “My Body, This Paper, This Fire”, accusing Derrida of reducing philosophy to textual analysis. The exchange estranged the two for years.
Connections
Criticizes
- History of Madness (Madness and Civilization)1961 · Michel Foucault
More works by Jacques Derrida
- 1967Of Grammatology
- 1968Plato's Pharmacy
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